Shiites riot after funeral for suicide attack victims

ASIF SHAHZADAssociated Press

Published Sunday, October 03, 2004

SIALKOT, Pakistan (AP) -- Thousands of minority Shiite Muslims rampaged through this eastern Pakistan city for the second straight day Saturday, burning a police station and the mayor's office after a mass funeral for 31 people killed by a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque.

Investigators questioned survivors of Friday's blast and sifted through the carnage at the Zainabia mosque in Sialkot for clues, but said it's not yet clear whether al-Qaida had a hand in the attack.

Hundreds of army troops and police commandos patrolled the streets, but initially struggled to contain rioting by youths that broke out after about 15,000 Shiite Muslim mourners, beating their chests and wailing, had gathered for a mass funeral for victims of the bombing.

The rioters attacked the office of Mayor Mian Javed, but he was not inside at the time. They also burned a record room of a court, a police station and several motorcycles parked there. There were no reports of injuries. Youths shouted slogans against the government of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the United States and the perpetrators of the attack. By late afternoon, security forces had brought the situation under control and the city was quiet.

The Pakistani government offered a reward of $175,000 for information leading to the identity of Friday's suicide bomber, as police investigators searched for clues at the mosque and questioned witnesses.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, and officials declined to speculate on who was responsible.

"Police and other security agencies are still investigating, and at this stage I cannot say whether al-Qaida was involved in this act of terrorism," provincial law minister Raja Basharat Elahi told The Associated Press.

Police quoted witnesses as saying the attacker strode into the mosque carrying the bomb in a briefcase and the moment he opened it, it exploded, killing 16 people on the spot. Fifteen others died later.

Elahi said 29 of the bodies had been identified, and that one or two of the unclaimed bodies could have been suicide bombers.

Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao was quoted as saying by the state news agency that the attack may have been a reaction to the death of Amjad Hussain Farooqi, a top Pakistani al-Qaida operative and radical Sunni Muslim militant group leader who was killed by Pakistani security forces in a gunbattle a week ago.

Farooqi was accused in a string of terrorist attacks in Pakistan, including the kidnapping and beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002, and two assassination attempts against Musharraf in December 2003 that killed 17 other people.

Farooqi was allegedly part of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militant group, blamed for a string of attacks on Shiites, including two bombings of mosques in the volatile southern city of Karachi in May that killed more than 40 people.